


Kaleidoscope

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: American McGee's Alice
Genre: F/M, Minor Character Death, archive fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 09:58:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14041749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: Cat doesn't mind the bloodstains. It's all shades of grey to him.





	Kaleidoscope

**Author's Note:**

> Last story in a challenge set, for Laylah, seconded by dormouse_in_tea and threewalls. As this one's the third of three, it no longer bears any particular resemblance to the original prompt, although there is a large predator, a virgin, and a sacrifice.
> 
> Can be read as gen, honestly, but if I'm putting Cat and Alice in a room together, I'm paring them up. Fight me. :D
> 
> Also, before you tell me cats aren't colorblind, it's one of Cat's lines from the game.

She knew, vaguely, like a rumor that someone had told her once, that the chess pieces opposing White should be Black, not Red. They should match the chessboard, only...she remembered, just as dimly, that they'd had a set back...back _home_ , and that the pieces had been Red then as well.

And in the Red castle, the chessboard matched the players.

With the wordless mutter of pawns echoing from somewhere up a flight of stairs, Alice hugged the wall of an empty corridor while doing her best not to touch it. The checkered floor was alarming enough, lurid red squares all but glowing amidst the white, but the walls had been painted as well, splashed haphazardly by what looked and smelled like blood.

The coppery scent was everywhere, going sweet and sickly as it dried, and Alice couldn't imagine where they'd found so many things to kill inside their own castle. She'd seen nothing but soldiers since she'd arrived--no gardeners, no cooks, no servants of any stripe--and she found that more ominous with every corner she turned.

"Dreadful place," she murmured to herself, rubbing her thumb back and forth over the hilt of her knife. Thinking of the aptly-named Pale Realm where the White pieces lived, she mused, "I wonder what they call it?"

"Home, most likely," offered a voice at her back, rich like chocolate and just as guilty a pleasure. Cat was already smirking before she turned to arch a brow at him, and he flicked an ear, twitched his whiskers as he lifted his head and took a considering sniff. "Charming perfume."

"It matches the décor," she shot back, a wry smile pulling helplessly at her lips. "Though I really don't think red is my color."

The very tip of Cat's tail danced madly for a moment, but all he did was widen his eyes at her, keeping his thoughts to himself. "Cats are colorblind, you know," he said mildly. "Kaleidoscopes hold no interest for us."

"Then I suppose this place doesn't trouble you at all," she said, head jerking up quickly as a Red Pawn's mindless squealing drew closer.

"There's no place left in Wonderland that doesn't," he heard him say behind her, but she was already taking the steps two by two, going to meet her enemies before they could surprise her.

Pawns weren't particularly ferocious or particularly bright; the knights were far fiercer and the rooks far stronger, the bishops deadly-cunning. Even in numbers the pawns fell quickly, and she closed her ears to their wails as she cut them down. She didn't have time to find ways around them. Far too much time had passed already since she'd seen the White Queen taken prisoner, and anything could have happened to her since.

The next time Alice looked around, Cat was gone.

_No matter,_ she thought, dragging the back of her wrist across her cheek and wrinkling her nose when it came away red. Cat never stayed long, but he always came back; sometimes he even came when he was called. When she was hesitant, confused, when she was too caught up in the _doing_ and needed to be brought back to earth, he'd appear from nowhere, drop teasing, enigmatic hints, and she'd find herself comforted.

There was so little that hadn't changed, so little that _didn't_ change the instant she let herself rely on it. Her knife was one. Cat was another.

There were chessmen everywhere as she made her way through the castle, but there was no sign of the Queen. She almost wished she could stop and question the enemy pieces, only she doubted her ability to intimidate the smirking bishops or reason with the knights; it would be completely impossible to _hold_ the granite-faced rooks, three times her size and clearly descended from the golems in her old fairytale books. She could kill them easily enough, but that required only the courage to begin and the will to see it through.

And to think she'd once hidden behind a tree and watched the White and Red Knights battle. They'd been different then, barely able to keep ahorse, courtly and formal. That dear old White Knight with the manners of a foolish uncle...where was he now?

_Dead_ , she thought as she thrust her knife behind a horse-headed knight's ear, ripping the blade down as it tossed its head back with a whinnying scream. _Dead or not himself anymore. Poor old things._

The dying knight flailed, its shield-wrapped arm catching her hard in the chest and knocking her aside, and what breath didn't escape her at the blow left her in a rush as she crashed into the wall. Things snapped and ground inside, and she hurt--she hurt _fiercely_ \--but it didn't need to be permanent. Ignoring the fact that she couldn't breathe--the wind knocked out of her, that was _all_ it was--she threw herself on the horsehead and stabbed it again, her slight weight and its fading strength sending them crashing to the floor.

The light that poured from the knight was red, red as the squares underneath them and the slick warmth that spattered her pinafore as she fell on top of him. Though he'd been alive just moments before, the Red Knight was already cold, his furless skin smooth as marble, and Alice's hands slid off to skid on the blood-soaked floor as his essence enveloped her, healing the damage he'd done.

She didn't know why she kept using her knife. The icewand would be better, or the jacks, the jackbomb. Cat was always chiding her for doing things the hard way.

She wiped her palms off on her skirts as she rose, stooping again to retrieve her knife as the knight's body grew hazy around the edges and seemed to shrink, finally fading out entirely. She needn't have bothered--her knife was always there to hand, always came back to her in the end--but she would have felt naked without it.

And where _was_ the Queen? She'd searched over half the keep and found nothing. If only the silly creature would call out, even scream--

_"Oh, oh, oh!"_ she remembered the White Queen wailing shrilly, shaking her hand about as if she'd caught hold of a burning poker, though she'd just gotten finished bandaging it up for no reason Alice could see. _"My finger's bleeding! Oh!"_ Only it hadn't been bleeding, not _yet._ One of the benefits of living backwards, the Queen had said, having a memory that worked both ways. It had seemed mad at the time, but madness no longer troubled Alice. She too could believe six impossible things before breakfast, and if the White Queen claimed that she could remember things that hadn't happened yet, then Alice would pay attention this time.

If the White Queen would at least scream, then Alice would have time to get to her.

_But can you alter a memory?_ she found herself wondering as she spotted two pawns coming out of the one door she hadn't searched in this part of the castle. _If she's truly living backwards, then wouldn't that be like changing the past? Only it's not the past for_ me, _not yet. But...oh, dear. This is terribly confusing._

None of the pawns on either side could speak a word, it seemed, but their cyclopean eyes were eloquent enough. This pair looked shocked to see her, but their surprise melted swiftly into fear. Alice used the icewand this time, not wanting Cat to think the less of her, and froze their terror in place.

There were stairs inside, and where there were stairs, there were often doors to hidden places. Wonderland had always been a maze, but she hadn't minded that so much when she'd had no particular destination in mind. Now it mattered. Now she _minded._

And now she heard what she'd been fearing, that horrible, train-whistle shriek that was the White Queen's cry of pain, and suddenly there was no time at all.

_Time,_ she thought, fumbling frantically for the silver pocket watch that would stop the whole world dead in its tracks--the Hatter's invention, surely, for he _would_ abuse Time so--but she never stopped running, up the stairs, past a window, sickeningly certain that she was late--

She only saw the end of it, the deadtime watch finally in hand but too slow to click its magic to life. The White Queen lay bound on a slab of grainy marble, the sharp and slanting blade of a guillotine leaving faint, bright trails in the air behind it as it came hissing down, jerking to a stop with a horrible thunk.

_"No!"_ Alice heard herself scream, felt her hands fill with something weighted and sturdy and didn't realize she'd called the heavy croquet mallet to her until she swung it at the glass. Ducking the shards that flew from the blow, she knocked out the rest of the window with a furious whine of effort. Jumping through the hole she'd made, ignoring the shards that clung to the window frame, she dropped down to the execution square below.

Two rooks slid ponderously over to engage her, but she laid about her with the mallet like a club, one that spat sparks of lightning when it connected with their stony bodies. Within moments, everything around her was still, and she stood panting with the mallet still clutched in her fists barely a foot from the White Queen's body.

It wasn't fading like the others had, and she didn't know if that was a good thing or not. The Queen looked old and thin, as if she'd aged thirty years and been worn to skin and bones with worry. Alice couldn't imagine why the White King had been so desperate to have her back to lead his armies; his Queen hadn't even been able to put her shawl on straight when Alice had known her before.

Dropping to her knees, Alice set down the mallet with more care than she needed to, eyes fixed on the grisly leavings at the foot of the block. She didn't understand how marble chess pieces could bleed, but there wasn't much of it, regardless. Not from the head, at any rate. Perhaps the blade had dammed the flow from the neck. Perhaps....

Alice swallowed, blinking back tears. She'd been a queen once herself, long ago. Sister queens, that was how it had been. Her, the White Queen, the _Red_ Queen. And before that....

She'd pinned up the poor dear's shawl for her, she remembered that, and brushed her hair, tidied her up since she was so clearly helpless. Like a small child just learning to dress itself, and Alice had...she'd made things _right._ Wasn't that why she was here now? To fix things?

The White Queen's head weighed more than she expected. It looked so lean, and she'd been an empty-headed thing before, though maybe that had changed as well. She would have liked to meet the changed Queen, would have cheered to see her marshalling her forces with fearless confidence, nonsense traded for keen strategy.

Even dead, her staring white eyes were sad and terrified.

"Alice?" Cat asked at her elbow, a note of curiosity lifting his voice.

"I'll just be a moment, Cat," she said quickly, remembering how he'd urged her to hurry after Rabbit...after the Hatter had....

"But what are you doing?"

"She's...she always pins it up wrong, you know," Alice said, her tremulous smile fondly exasperated. "Her shawl. It always gets bunched up on one side, and then I have to fix it."

"Alice?"

The blade was in the way. She didn't like that, because to lift the blade or move the Queen's body, she'd have to put down the head, and the marble was only just starting to warm under her palms. That would never do.

Perhaps if she laid the head on the body while she shifted it. At least that way, if the warmth seeped out of it again, it'd be going in the right direction.

"I...I just have to fix this. It shouldn't take long. And then she'll...I suppose she'll scold me for not having studied my Maths since we spoke last." She felt that she could answer any Division problem put to her these days, though. What did you get when you divided a snark by a knife? A Queen by a guillotine?

_Simple._

"Alice...Alice, she's dead. You can't fix her that easily."

Cat sounded very serious, very sure. Staring down at the White Queen's corpse, she made a faint sound of distress. Oh. She'd gotten the Queen all _red._

"But...she was waiting for me," Alice said in a small voice.

"I know," Cat sighed, rising to his feet.

When he pushed his head under her hand, she didn't stop to think about his dignity or his habit of mysterious aloofness. Her Cat was still a _cat_ , and she spoke their language tolerably well, enough to know an invitation when one was given.

Cat didn't stiffen or hiss when she sank down beside him and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his bony shoulder, his tomcat-scratchy fur. "I know," he said again, purring in her ear as she tried to work out whether she wanted to cry or not, whether she had any tears left in her after Rabbit. Later, she'd be angry. No. _Very soon_ she'd be _very_ angry. She was just so tired of being too late or not enough, of seeing everyone she knew disappear one after another.

Cat's purring was thunderous, unbroken as he scoured her nape with a brief, comforting lick. Eyes open and staring dry, she glanced down at her hands, fingers worked into his fur, and was dismayed to find them caked in red. Poor Cat. She must look a fright. It was a wonder her allies didn't run screaming when they saw her.

Except for Cat, of course. He always came back, would never leave her.

Cat didn't mind the bloodstains. It was all shades of grey to him.


End file.
